Book Review: Ronda Rousey’s ‘My Fight/Your Fight’

Ronda Rousey’s road to the top was not without its bumps. |
Photo: Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com

There may be no character more polarizing for mixed martial arts
fans than Ronda
Rousey. The undefeated
Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s bantamweight titleholder
embodies a love-me-or-hate-me shoulder shrug, her overwhelming
sense of purpose and self-belief buoying her to unprecedented
success in the midst of resounding boos and cheers -- reactions she
readily expects, embraces and dismisses.

This dichotomy is on full display in “My Fight/Your Fight,” an
unflinching look at the personal and professional highs and lows of
the MMA starlet. Alongside award-winning journalist Maria Burns
Ortiz, who also happens to be the champion’s sister, Rousey details
the good, the bad and the ugly without blinking an eye. Though
Ortiz clearly brings the writing chops, penning a highly readable
book without diluting the content, the voice is unmistakably
charged with Rousey’s trademark cavalier charm and candid sass. It
is this ability to cut through the noise that allows Rousey to open
the old closet and dust off whatever she finds there, including
stories of failed relationships, the hollow sense of happiness
after medaling at the Olympics and even an STD scare.

Early in the book, Rousey states: “I dissociate from pain, because
I am not the pain that I am feeling.” Yet, the pains of her
adolescence play an aortic role in the book. The future Olympic
judoka had no easy paths to the top, overcoming an early-childhood
speech impediment, an insecurity-driven eating disorder and the
heartbreaking losses inside and out of competition, the most
emotionally resonant of which being the decline of her father’s
health that culminated in his shocking, tragic death.

In these moments of vulnerability, the soul of the book -- and the
woman behind it -- finds its lungs. From the outside looking in,
Rousey’s career has been a one-way ascending escalator to MMA
monarchy. In reality, her success was largely forged out of
missteps and detours, marked with tear-soaked gis and burned
bridges. Yet through the chaos, including one of the worst single
days anyone could possibly have, Rousey is an unabashed believer in
destiny, retrospectively dissecting tragedies to find the seams of
greatness between the loneliness and frustration she experienced at
the time.

This is not to say the book is perfect.

Each chapter begins with a monologue from Rousey in the present, a
brief raising of the periscope to survey the slipstream behind her
before retracting for a dive back into her past. Truth be told, the
book would have been better off without these half-spoiler
alerts/half-motivational poster captions. The monologues almost
uniformly arrive at some sort of clichéd truism, but even the
exceptional cases of genuine insight are inherently less
interesting than the actual episodes from her life. The
platitudinous conclusions -- and there are many -- seem greased up
to fit into a contrived notion that Rousey’s journey to success is
really no different than the Average Joe’s. It is a noble attempt
to bridge the gap between the champ and the readers through Venn
Diagram logic, but the problem is that she is not like the rest of
us; and she is the better for it. Fans and detractors alike revel
in their feelings towards Rousey, not because she is relatable but
because she is a fascinating hyperbole. That is why the best
moments in the book stem from narrative depictions from inside
Rousey’s head; it is the difference between watching a movie and
having someone give you a play-by-play.

Then there are the moments where Rousey indulges in her unmuzzled
position as the Victor from the Mountaintop, recounting more than
one of her judo losses conspiratorially -- the phrase “she knew she
lost” makes several cameos -- and giving a particular ex-boyfriend
the hilariously puerile nom de plume “Dick Ittybitty.”
Verisimilitude be damned, this is her memoir. Why wouldn’t she
include some personal barbs?

The jabs do not stop there, either. If you are familiar with her
public persona, you will no doubt find peripherally written slights
to the usual suspects. There is an entire chapter titled, “You Will
Never Win a Fight by Running Away,” in which she likens point
fighting to “fighting a lawyer.” (Cough, Floyd Mayweather Jr.). In
another section, she describes the first time she watched a women’s
MMA fight with a group of men, relishing the fact that “the [female
fighters] were beautiful, yes, but the guys didn’t talk about them
like they did the ring girls … who they talked about as if they
were strippers.” (Cough, Arianny Celeste.) Of course, there is the
obligatory steroid commentary: “The one thing they couldn’t inject
into their asses is belief.” (Cough, Cristiane
Justino.)

Overall, “My Fight/Your Fight” is a compelling glimpse into the
mind and the mirror of MMA’s most-wanted woman, though not without
its share of minor flaws. Still, an unapologetic honesty permeates
the book. As a memoir, the reader can no doubt feel Rousey’s
moments of catharsis in writing this; one gets the sense that she
spent so much time trudging through the trenches, it must have been
liberating to come up for air, see how far she has come and put her
story in open space. Existing fans of Rousey will discover new
reasons and reminders to fortify their support, and open-minded
naysayers may even flirt with a change of heart. If not, it won’t
bother Rousey much. She has made it through much worse, and look
where she is now.